LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

Index 2/28/06

7 posts: (1) For Coney Island?--Cyber-Serendip; (2) Bush Bums Blair--Weenie Watch; (3) Kelo Getting Castled--The Home Front; (4) Europe: Creedal Society or "Eurabia"?--Weenie Watch; (5) Hamas = PLO Sans Gloves--Us v. Them; (6) If Osama Hits Saudi Oil, Can We Trade Offal For Oil?--Us v. Them; (7) Jazz: Rich Was All Drums, No Buddy--Class v. Crass.

For Coney Island?

New Yorkers who remember the parachute jump ride at Coney Island more than one generation ago will enjoy trying to top a 25-mile high jump, should it come off.  But remember mom's advice: Do dress warmly.  And take a deep breath....

Bush Bums Blair

Yesterday in an LFTC post I noted that a good foreign policy discriminates--intelligently: favor first your friends, aid allies of convenience, set neutrals at arms length, tilt against rivals and stiff real enemies.  So who does 43 stiff? Reports Hudson scholar and Blair adviser, Irwin Stelzer, 43 is shafting Tony Blair.  While Karen Hughes sucks up to anti-US Muslims worldwide, 43 stiffs Tough Tony.  Read the gory details here and weep.

Kelo Getting Castled

In chess, one protective move a player can make to secure his king from attacking pieces, one especially useful after the center pawns have been advanced, is to "castle": move the king two spaces to the right, while moving the king-side rook two spaces to the left.  This places the king near the right corner, behind a row of pawns.  The Supreme Court's 2005 property rights atrocity in Kelo v. New London, giving carte blanche to cities or states allied with developers to bulldoze private homes in favor of private developers, has spurred a series of protective moves in the states.  In effect, states are "castling" to protect their citizens' castles.  Today's Wall Street Journal gives a tally of states whose legislatures have already moved to bar state judicial takings for private benefit, in some states by constitutional amendment that even bars state lawmakers from jumping in.  Nice work, folks.

Europe: Creedal Society or "Eurabia"?

Francis Fukuyama warns that Europe cannot respond to Islamist sentiment within their Muslim populations by a sectarian exclusion.  Rather it must replace its current mix of "see no evil" tolerance and moral relativism with an idea-based assimilationist ethos of the kind that the US has been successful with since its founding.  Fukuyama also warns Europeans that they need to junk the 1968-style reflexive anti-Americanism once and for all.  Well said.  And RCP columnist David Warren calls the Cartoon Riots the most significant war event since 9/11.  He fears that the West is retreating into a 1930s-style appeasement, with comparably poor results ultimately to follow.  Alas, this seems true, too.

Hamas = PLO Sans Gloves

Mideast scholar Barry Rubin sees Hamas faking out the all-too-easily fooled West just as the PLO did, by morphing into a faux peace party.  Depressing, but probably true.  It all goes back to what the late Saul Bellow said: "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

If Osama Hits Saudi Oil, Can We Trade Offal for Oil?

NRO's James Robbins regards Osama's decision to target Saudi oil as a major strategic shift.  Hitherto OBL's position has been that the US might destroy Saudi oil.  Now he is willing to rule a Caliphate in economic ruin.  Meanwhile, a major US startup is converting hydrobarbon waste (of any kind, including--yeech!--turkey offal) into oil; it aims for a price of $8 to $12 per barrel--it would be $15 at first.  Their technique, thermo-deploymerization (bet you can't say it three times in a row fast) has influential backers.  An energy maven has patiently explained to non-scientific me that any hydrocarbon can be converted into any other hydrocarbon; whether it makes economic sense to do so given marketplace alternaitves is the $64 gazillion dollar question.   Stay tuned.

Jazz: Rich Was All Drums, No Buddy

Jazz critic Will Friedwald salutes the late Buddy Rich's drumming, but not his manners.  Right on both counts.  Rich (1917-1987) was the greatest jazz drummer ever--not just rocket-speed flash, but all the subtleties, too.  Rich flourished from around 1940 to 1970, then in his last 15 years played with young musicians rather than the jazz greats who could extend his maximum.  Online free music samples I did not find (Amazon has many BR CDs & DVDs), but here is a great link to a tape of  his legendary temper: his famous (in music circles) reaming out his band on the bus (taped by a young pianist in the band)--it is a scream!  For a great bio by a friend, read Mel Torme's Traps: The Drum Wonder.  And if you think that the Tommy Dorsey band, where Rich broke in big time, was staid, get a recording with Hawaiian War Chant on it, or see it performed by renting the 1942 light comedy, Ship Ahoy, which opens with the Dorsey band.  Rich trades solo licks with trumpet great Ziggy Elman;,the number finishes off with "Lady Taps" herself, Eleanor Powell, flashing by in--yes, a bikini grass skirt!

Index 2/27/06

12 posts: (1) Waterfront Wake-Up--Weenie Watch; (2) Iraq: Supporters & Critics Re-Assess--Us v. Them; (3) Iraq WMD: Ivan Did It--Weenie Watch; (4) Iraq: Did Gerhard Help?--Weenie Watch; (5) Freedom of Speech Betrayed: Connecting the Dots--MSM Murders; (6) Axis Sally Comes to Yale--Weenie Watch; (7) Civilizations: Clash or Crash?--Us v. Them; (8) Kissinger on Hamas & Israel--Us v. Them; (9) Weasel Wordplay--Cyber-Serendip; (10) Global Warming: An Advocate Speaks, Calmly--"It's the Earth, Stupid!"; (11) Liberalism: Mr. & Mrs. Grumpy--The Home Front; (12) News: First Is Worst--MSM Murders.

Waterfront Wake-Up

Bush says one day that he would veto any effort by Congress to kill the Dubai Ports World deal to serve major US ports, and then the next day the WH says that the deal was signed & sealed before 43 knew of it?  What were they thinking? To be fair, Jonah Golderg informs us that the Dubai firm bought CSX's US container business last year, to silence.

It is easy to laugh at Democrats who have been horrified at the thought of treating Arabs differently, lest P.C. be violated, and now scream at this deal.  The 2/22 NY Sun has a delicious editorial detailing the union ties of Democrats--port unionism also motivates them.  NRO's Andrew McCarthy, in the same vein, offers us the Clinton China/UAE suck-up chronicles, but chides the White House as well for political correctness.  As blogger Michelle Malkin says  with justified schadenfreude, "We are all profilers now."  Wesley Pruden weighs in with his customary wit, and sees 43 throwing away his party's strongest asset: national security credibility.  Naturally, Arabs are being quoted accusing the US of "Islamophobia."

But as the NY Post's pointed 2/22 comment, appropriately entitled Dubya Jeopardy, neatly sums up the problems with the deal.  True, the UAE firm will not be responsible for security--that will still be provided by US Customs, Border Security & the Coast Guard, but it will have to work with the security apparatus and will therefore gain knowledge.  In a 2/26 editorial, however, the NY Post welcomed a "lull" so that both sides could cool off and consider the deal upon closer scrutiny.  Ex-Scoop Jackson aide Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, explains more about the shadowy government committee that put this clinker together.  The 2/22 Washington Times reports that the $6.8 billion acquisition of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation, the UK firm, by Dubai Ports World would create the world's third largest port operator.  The firm provides stevedoring, terminal operating, loading and unloading and ferry service in 18 countries.

A 2/22 Wall Street Journal editorial defends the deal, and says that some 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens does not argue against the deal, because some Muslims who did the 7/7 bombings last year in London were UK citizens, and British firm, P&O provided port security before.  Yes, but the Brits are our dear friends.  The UAE is nothing like that; it is a fair-weather partner at best, having helped fund the spread of Islamist fanaticism with petrodollars.  Mansoor Ijaz, a solid national security guy, explains why he sees Dubai having made a strongly pro-US turn since 9/11, despite pre-9/11 actions.  On 2/21 NRO collected contrasting brief posts.  A 2/23 editorial in the WSJ tells us that Dubai is now a trade entrepot and on the way to becoming an Arab Switzerland.  A 2/23 Weekly Standard piece provides intriguing details from a captured al-Qa'ida document (declassified), with cause for pro and con.  Top blogger Glenn Reynolds, initially opposed, now supports the deal, but suggests that the White House should use blogs as an early warning system.  NR Editor Rich Lowry argues strongly that the UAE is reformed and that its security role will be minimal; the real port security problem he sees is at foreign ports of embarkation, not US ports of disembarkation; AEI's Veronique de Rugy agrees.   Ex-Green Beret Jack Kelly also endorses the deal.

How clueless 43 is can best be shown by reference is to his remark about it being wrong to "discriminate."  Any intelligent foreign policy does precisely that: intelligently discriminate.  Favor true friends, lean towards allies of convenience, deal arms-length with neutrals, beware of rivals and above all, stiff your enemies.  So: favor true-blue pals like Britain, Australia & Japan; lean towards fair-weather states like UAE; treat straddlers like Switzerland & Sweden at arms length; beware of rivals like China; and stiff mortal enemies like Iran.

Neither the UAE nor Arabs in general are our true friends at this juncture.  In the event, with the deal on ice for a few months, Charles Krauthammer suggests a Dubai Finesse that allows for more safeguards.  It appears likely that something along these lines may be worked out.  The Sunday Washington Post carried an informative visual diagram showing how the port trade moves; well worth checking out.

Iraq: Supporters & Critics Re-Assess

Eliot Cohen, ace analyst of military and national security matters, wonders "will we persevere?" in Iraq.  Cohen, an acid critic of the war, sees progress, but considers it reversible.  And here is a link to a magnificent tribute to the US military by an Iraqi mayor whose town was held hostage by al-Qa'ida's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.  AEI's Karl Zinsmeister recently returned from his fourth extended tour inside Iraq--the first was during Iraqi Freedom.  He has a superb report in the March 2006 The American Enterprise magazine.  He sees us making progress--and, perhaps more important, the Iraqis making progress.  His perspective is similar to that of Eliot Cohen, but presents much more detail.  It is well worth checking out.  The print issue of TAE contains several other superb articles, not available online.  Zinsmeister, who edits TAE, has an editorial in which he recounts Iraqi misdeeds--stealing stuff from kids and weaker comrades, vast financial corruption, sheer unwillingness to step up to the plate in too many cases.  KZ believes that had Iraqis responded better they could have helped us crush the insurgency quickly and then gone on to build a market economy.  Maybe, but in the event the moment, such as it may (or may not) have been, clearly was missed.  The situation thus remains fluid, and likely will be so for years.

Ever sage William Buckley says our Iraq mission has failed.  TAS maven Jed Babbin, long a 43 supporter, sees us failing in Iraq for want of Iraqi cooperation and Presidential leadership.  We have, he says, failed to deal with religious leaders in a decisive way.  All views are superbly presented.  Which suggests one possible change not often discussed: partition.

For reasons partly idealistic, and partly to avoid even the appearance of imperialist intent, the US goal has been from the outset to midwife a pluralist, unified, democratic Iraq.  This was defensible as first-choice policy, but may no longer be possible.  If Sunnis insist on civil war, let them fight it without oil, which lies in the north and south but not the Sunni center.  Let the Kurds form Kurdistan, with a US guarantee to Turkey that Kurds will not foment unrest in Turkey.  Turkey's betrayal of the US in 2003--freezing our strongest ground division--entitles us to deny the veto they have long held over an independent Kurdistan.  The Shi'a can form Sumer in the South, as they tentatively planned to do.  Iran?  AEI Mideast expert Michael Rubin has a disturbing op-ed on Iran's meddling in Iraq and elsehwere; especially galling is the stupid statement of a State Department official that, unlike the Iranians, we do not pass out bags of money in Iraq.  No wonder we are struggling!  We can address a Shi'a Iraq/Iran alliance, should it materialize--sought by radical but not moderate Iraqi clerics--best by bringing about regime change in Iran, without occupying the place (Colin Powell's "pottery" rule is wrong: we need not pick up the pieces).  And let the Sunnis have their rump central state, without oil.  Not a pretty picture, but better than a unified, hostile, anti-American  Iraq, if that proves the only practical real-world alternative.

Iraq WMD: Ivan Did It

Proliferation expert Kenneth Timmerman reports in great detail about how Russia spirited out Saddam's WMD before the 2003 war.  The US, fearful that Russia would help Iran's nuke program, does not want this information to get out.  Russia will help Iran anyway, so out with it.  A "must read."

Iraq: Did Gerhard Help?

The NY Times has a front-pager revealing that German intelligence gave us Saddam's Baghdad defense plan a month before the war, and that certain Arab regimes, notably Egypt & Saudi Arabia, gave us more help than advertised.  Nice to hear, but is it ever possible for the Pentagon to keep anything classified?  Apparently not.

Freedom of Speech Betrayed: Connecting the Dots

Conservative William Bennett and liberal (though no softie, he) lawyer Alan Dershowitz have joined in a slam-bang 2/23 op-ed assailing the mainstream media for ditching the First Amendment's press clause to serve artificially inflamed Islamist sensitivities--in reality, bow to threats of violence.  Theirs is a powerful scolding of MSM for abdicating its core responsibility to speak freely.  Another warning comes from Ben Stein in his 2/23 TAS piece, in which he says we are losing the war at home by succumbing to Islamist intimidation re free expression.  He notes that six University of Illinois college students were fired from the student newspaper for publishing six of the offending cartoons, along with an explanation of why Muslims found them offensive--the firing came after some Muslim students complained.  It, too, is worth a read.

Two college paper editors explained why they decided, in one case (Harvard), to publish and in the other case (Michigan), not to publish.  We need to have a bottom line:  Satire often offends--frequently intentionally.  Do we wish to give up the freedom to satirize a religion?

Enter George Will.  His Sunday W-Post column dissects the Western ailment at the root of the Cartoon War: political correctness and its creation of "hate speech."  Says Will: Austria's convicting David Irving of Holocaust denial and sentencing him to three years in prison is an act that Irving, somewhere in his "reptile" brain, grasps means victory for opponents of free speech.  Campus speech codes that subordinate free speech to the sensitivities of designated groups destroy free speech and give such groups a veto over permissible speech.  Such laws open "a moral pork barrel for politicians."  Will sums up:

"American legislators, using the criminal law for moral exhibitionism, enact 'hate crime' laws. Hate crimes are, in effect, thought crimes. Hate-crime laws mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed as a result of, or at least when accompanied by, particular states of mind of which the government particularly disapproves. Governments that feel free to stigmatize, indeed criminalize, certain political thoughts and attitudes will move on to regulating what expresses such thoughts and attitudes -- speech.

"For several decades in America, the aim of much of the jurisprudential thought about the First Amendment's free-speech provision has been to justify contracting its protections. Freedom of speech is increasingly 'balanced' against 'competing values.' As a result, it is whittled down, often by seemingly innocuous increments, to a minor constitutional afterthought."

Giving such power to groups seething with resentment will only lead to infinitely expanding categories of what gives offense.  They empower mullahs, Will says, not only in the West, but in the closed societies they rule.  Mark Steyn gives bracing examples of denial in Europe--especially, in France, where Muslims attack Jews and newspapers either do not even bother to print the story, or in doing so they refuse to acknowledge documented anti-Semitic motives.  One Jewish captive was tortured to death while his tormentors screamed verses from the Qu'ran over the phone to his parents.

Meanwhile, Diana West offers examples of how imbecilic and clueless 43's State Department global public diplomacy point-person, Karen Hughes, is in terms of sending a message to the Islamic world.  KH tells the world that Rosa Parks--NOT making this up--had a tough time in the good ol' US of A, and so we are hardly without sins of recent memory as we face the Muslim world.  Does KH know that in 1982 Syrian strongman Hafez Assad massacred 20,000 or so Muslim Brotherhood folks to quell dissent in Syria, and had tanks literally raze their neighborhood to the ground?  Does she know the "world community" and its pseudo-embodiment, the UN, said not a thing?  Does she know that the Arab world practiced slavery longer, and took more Africans, than did the West--and that without the help of African tribal chieftains who brought captives to the ports the African slave trade couldn't have gone global?  You do not win friends leading with your chin, Karen.  Maybe we might trade KH to Egypt for a draft pick.

Apologists for Muslim intimidation and confessionals for US sins are the last two things we need in the fight to restore the full measure of free speech here and abroad--the kind that permits the "uninhibited, robust and wide-open" public debate that the Supreme Court set as the platinum speech standard back in 1964.

Axis Sally Comes to Yale

The NY Times Sunday Magazine carries a heartwarming story of how the ex-publicist for the Taliban now attends Yale.  It is long, and I made it only part way through before throwing up.  Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, Lord Haw-Haw, meet your spiritual legatee.  Just try to imagine the following dispatch in the February 26, 1949 NY Times: "Mildred Gillars, the former Axis Sally, now attends Yale."  Taliban are still killing Americans in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and their former flack comes to America and sucks at the teat of one of its most prestigious (probably not justified any more) colleges.  The Taliban's ex-flack is attending the alma mater of none other that G. W. Bush, of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC 20002.  Where the Hell were State & the INS on this one?  As usual, out to lunch.  To learn more about who we let in, read John Fund's short portrait in today's Opinion Journal; Fund met the punk in spring 2001.  His is a very revealing article.

Civilizations: Clash or Crash?

Historian Niall Ferguson argues that Samuel Huntington's 1994 "clash of civilizations" model for world conflict did not quite get it right: Rather, we are witnessing a crash of civilizations--internecine strife within that sunders formerly united polities--united by brute force, in most cases.  Iraq may be a precursor for this, rather than for a clash with the West.  Provocative and worth reading.

Kissinger on Hamas & Israel

Henry Kissinger has a concise op-ed today on how Hamas must evolve in order to interact with Israel.  He does not say it will happen, but lays out with clarity his own vision.  Certain practical negotiations not directly related to peace issues--water rights, etc.--might be needed in any event.  HK sees Israel shedding some areas of Israel with concentrated Arab populations as compensation for retaining some territory on the West Bank.  The Palestinians have no legitimate entitlement to such compensation, as the 1948-1967 lines were not final frontiers, because Arabs refused to recognize the Jewish state.  Whether an ethnic swap of territorial slivers make sense nonetheless depends upon whether Israel fears its internal Arab populations more or less than it fears the Palestinians.  Take a look.

Weasel Wordplay

John Leo, chronicler for many years of P.C. and other ways language is twisted into a mental pretzel, offers us a neat cavalcade of prize euphemisms.  May he, a valuable national resource, never be "deinstalled."

Global Warming: An Advocate Speaks, Calmly

Nobel Laureate and nonpareil intellectual Thomas C. Schelling (a Wohlstetter family favorite--he wrote the forward to my aunt Roberta's prize-winning 1962 book on the intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision) makes an eloquent case for a moderate insurance policy against further warming.  LFTC has written consistently that neither data density nor computer climate models are nearly good enough to predict future warming, plus that past fluctuations have been wider in similar short periods.  But Schelling's position is a thoughtful one, and merits a read.

Liberalism: Mr. & Mrs. Grumpy

George Will enjoys telling us why conservatives have more fun than liberals.  Will wit at its best.

News: First Is Worst

Dan Henninger sees the Dubai port-operation controversy as close on the merits, but ruined by a poisonous mix of political opportunism and media hype, as have other major issues in recent times been so ruined.  Writes he:

"It has been a truism for a century that press stereotypes set the tone of many public events. We used to call this the conventional wisdom; now it's a 'narrative.' By and large it's a neutral phenomenon. But in our jacked-up media age, first impressions--false or true--becomes powerful and hard to alter. Surely this is one reason Vice President Cheney's office resisted 'releasing' the shooting incident into the media ozone.

"Our political elites, rather than recognize they are playing with a new kind of fire, instead have become pyromaniacs, lighting the fires. New Orleans even now can't get out from under the initial crazy statements the pols were hurling over Katrina. Our politicians seem to have arrived at the conclusion that they somehow no longer bear responsibility for what they say, or that there is no consequence to what they say. But they do and there is. Yosemite Sam was a cartoon. The ability of government to function in a dangerous world is not."

And that is real bad news.

Index 2/20-24/06

Omnibus Vacation Posts for Week of 2/20-24: (1) American Ideas: New "Neos" Needed?--The Home Front; (2) Decline of American Empire: Will It Fall, Too?--The Home Front; (3) Lightspeed Lies, Tortoise Truth--Us v. Them; (4) Censorship By Assassination--Us v. Them; (5) Rose of Denmark: Why He Published the Cartoons--Us v. Them; (6) China: Internet Inroads--Us v. Them; (7) Iraq: Will Saddam Tapes Be Released?--Weenie Watch; (8) UN: Love For Sale--Turtle Bay Tortoise.

American Ideas: New "Neos" Needed?

Francis Fukuyama, brilliant author/polymath, has written a bracing critique of the Bush Doctrine and the "neo-conservatives" that produced it.  It argues that 43 and his supporters committed three fundamental errors that will force a re-thinking of US ideas: (1) the need for and competence to effect coercive regime change; (2) a perceived unilateralism that slights allies; (3) a tacit, global acceptance of American hegemony.  Fukuyama argues: (1) democracy can't be coerced from outside, but rather is an opportunistic process that requires domestic ferment first; (2) multilateral fora more effective than the ineffective UN must be created and used in lieu of perceived unilateralism; (3) American hegemony will never be accepted.  I have quibbles here and there with his analysis--especially in saying that the US had no plan re Iraq--in fact, we did: the Iraq Liberation Act, signed into law by President Clinton.  The CIA & State Department blocked this, because of their animus towards Ahmad Chalabi.  We will never know whether it would have worked, as it was the road not taken.  But his assessment is a trenchant critique that every supporter of the Bush Doctrine must read with care.

Decline of American Empire: Will It Fall, Too?

The Wall Street Weekend Journal reports that Donald Rumsfeld wants to reconfigure the US military posture to place more emphasis on Special Operations.  Rumsfeld believes that the threat to fear most is sub-national jihadist terrorism, mobile and global in reach, scattered throughout some 80 countries.  Iraq is, in his view, an anomaly.  Instead his model is the Reagan-era campaign in El Salvador.  Critics note that indigenous forces since 9/11 have performed poorly: Pakistani and Afghan troops let thousands of al-Qa'ida fighters escape; Iraqi forces performed poorly for two years.  If there is one thing all sides are agreed on, it is that a repeat of the Iraq exercise in nation-building is dead.  While casualties are low by historical standards, the lack of a clear path to victory has chastened partisans of democratizing the Mideast (me too).  Indeed, had the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani--who should have won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, but for the Norwegian Nobel panel's annual impulse to chide the US--not restrained Iraq's Shi'a leaders the US might already have been forced to beat an ignominious retreat.

Not that seeking to spread democracy in the region was loopy idealism; tyrannies there were incubators of terror and aggression.  But the US today cannot function like the British did in the 19th century.  A hostile global media and stronger local adversaries make a Pax Americana far less achievable than was Pax Britannica.  US military action must be below media visibility to be effective--the Iraqi Freedom embedded media experience was probably an anomaly.  Worse, we cannot count on post-US Iraq being an ally, as Germany and Japan were after their transformations.  "No more Iraqs" will be the motto for the next generation of US commanders, as "No more Vietnams" was for the generation that now commands.

Lightspeed Lies, Tortoise Truth

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech that is one of the most important given by a Cabinet official in a long time.  He quoted from the strategic missive sent last year by al-Qa'ida Number Two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to al-Q's chieftain in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: "More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. . . we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of [Muslims]."

Rumsfeld observed that while our government continues to operate on an 8-to-5 cycle our adversaries go 24/7.  They are vastly more agile than we.  And we are losing the war.  Rumsfeld said: "In this environment the old adage that: 'A lie can be half way around the world before the truth has its boots on' becomes doubly true with today’s technologies."

Alas, the Secretary understates the case.  Lies travel at the speed of light--7 times around the world in a single second.  Truth travels at the speed of horseback--getting the facts straight takes time.  When lies traveled at the speed of a train and truth at strolling speed, the time difference did not matter much.  Now it is everything.  Rumsfeld asks for private sector help.  Fine.  But the grim reality is that a deeply hostile global media elite will allow our adversaries to, in Rumsfeld's words, to "propagate lies with impunity--with no penalty whatsoever."  Let our side be caught in a single lie and we will hear about it forever.  A reporter seeking a Pulitzer may win one for making a US Cabinet official a proven liar; no reporter will win making Mullah Omar a liar.

All of which means that terrorists have--and will retain for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever--a media edge.  Only if the terrorists over-reach in their murderous ways will public opinion be able to resist the media tilt towards terror.  Fortunately for us, they has happened before, and will happen again.  Meanwhile, Rumsfeld's advice is sound.  Even if it does not close the gap entirely it will help.  And we need all the help we can get.

Censorship By Assassination

A Pakistani Muslim cleric has announced a $1 million bounty for assassination of the Dane who drew the Muhammad cartoons last fall.  Call it Islamist privatization, it promises to be very effective.  It takes one radical imam to put up a sum to target an offending Westerner.  This tactic will silence a lot more than one cartoonist.

Rose of Denamrk: Why He Published the Cartoons

Flemming Rose, editor of Copenhagen newspaper Jyllands-Posten, has an eloquent and forceful Washington Post op-ed explaining why he published the cartoons, and recounts the heartening result in Denmark.  He published them because satire is part of Danish free-speech tradition, religions not excepted.  More significantly, he informs us that moderate Muslim leaders in Denmark have rejected the radical imams who took the cartoons, with nasty ones added, to the Mideast.  There has been much debate--all of it civil--about the cartoons in Denmark, with Muslims participating fully.  Rose believes that moderate political leadership among Danish Muslims has been strengthened by the controversy.  Islam in Denmark will, he believes, conform to secular law, not sha'ria.  Pray he is right.

China: Internet Inroads

A Washington Post Sunday front-pager gives an optimistic portrait of how the Internet is opening up China more than political leaders desire.  China is home to an estimated 111 million Internet users, 81 million users of Instant Messaging (IM allows users to exchange e-messages in the same way people converse on the phone--in real-time) and 648,000 websites.  The story tells how a senior newspaper editor, who objected to a point-system proposed at the paper to grade stories by whether they met with Party approval, sent a message to Internet recipients, who then used blogging to create enough of a firestorm for the plan to be junked.  Monday's W-Post has a second front-pager on how Chinese authorities have blocked access to online encyclopedia Wikipedia, despite minimal political content; it includes historical reference to the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre.  Both are well worth a read.

Iraq: Will Saddam Tapes Be Released?

Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte opposes rapid release of 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes, citing the usual stuff about sensitive information.  A Washington Times editorial tells us that from 12 hours made public we learn that Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov was in Iraq in December 2002 helping Saddam dispose of his WMD, using Russian commandos.  That leaves 2,988 hours to go.  A Weekly Standard editorial tells of the runaround that Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairmanf Peter Hoekstra has been getting.  43 reportedly favors release.  Stay tuned.

UN: Love For Sale

Claudia Rosett, a true national resource for, among other things, giving the UN bureaucracy heartburn, reports that Kofi Annan has just accepted a $500,000 award as winner of the biennial Zayed International Prize for the Environment, bestowed by the ruler of Dubai and awarded by a jury that includes UN subordinates of Annan's.  Past winners include Jimmy Carter, whose sole contribution to the environment has been his injecting thirty years worth of hot air into global political discourse.

Index 2/17/06

8 posts: (1) Gored in Saudi Sands--Weenie Watch; (2) Can Al Gore End Toad Terror Down Under?--Cyber-Serendip; (3) When Law Aids Terror--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (4) Pastries from The Prophet?--Us v. Them; (5) France's Neo-Nazi/Neo-Soviet Pact--Weenie Watch; (6) Katrina Kayo by Congress?--Katrina Etc.; (7) CIA Domestic Assassin Program--Weenie Watch; (8) Crime: Safer With Cary & Sophia--Cyber-Serendip.

Gored in Saudi Sands

I resisted the temptation to take an immediate blast at Al Gore for his appalling defamation of President Bush and the USA at a speech in, of all places, Saudi Arabia, cradle for 15 of 19 hijackers on 9/11.  But Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Jack Kelly has rewarded my patience.  His 2/17 column gives the numbers for detention of Arab-Americans in 9/11's aftermath.  A-G John Ashcroft rounded up about 1,200: 725 were held on immigration violations, 360 on suspicion of terrorism links and 100 on unrelated criminal charges.  According to a June 2003 Justice Department inspector general report, 59 percent were charged within three days and only 24 detainees--two percent--were held at least one month.  This out of an estimated 3 million Arab-American population.  Oh, by the way, the numbers on detainees arrested came from the Arab-American anti-Discrimination Committee, not exactly a hotbed of anti-Arab or anti-Muslim feeling, one would think.  This is the performance of which Al said in Saudiland that Arabs were "indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa and not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable."  Really.  Kelly notes that the 9/11 report said that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, 9/11 attack chief planner, selected Saudis because they were able to so easily get visas.  You'd think that speaking in Saudi Arabia would be the perfect place for Al to give one of his Global Warming sermons.

Can Al Gore End Toad Terror Down Under?

Australia has a severe toxic toads problem.  The toads were introduced in Australia 70 years ago to  control pests.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the toads have become pests themselves.  This is a job for Al Gore, himself Global Pest Number Three (Jimmy Oil is first, Mr. Bill second).  So Al, stop sucking up to the Saudis, and get to work.  It takes a pest to know one.

When Law Aids Terror

An LA Times front-pager yesterday instructs why our legal system and the concomitant desire to prosecute terrorists is a menace to counter-terror efforts.  In a Texas case the authorities accidentally disclosed secret information: wiretap requests that contained classified information about foreign intelligence sources.

Pastries From The Prophet?

Iran has finally fired the shot heard 'round the world.  Henceforth--NOT a misprint--Danish pastries, apparently quite popular in Iran, will no longer be sold under their locational name.  Instead the pastries will be called "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad."  Next: an Islamic Valentine's Day, with roses from you-know-who??

France's Neo-Nazi/Neo-Soviet Pact

Today's New York Sun has a chilling article on a demonic embryonic political pact engineered by French neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen: an alliance, along with France's far left, with France's Muslims.  Le Pen's National Front is splitting 50-50, as half the old party was Christian rightists.  Here is the arithmetic: France's population is now 62 million, of which 6 to 8 million (10 to 13%) are Muslim.  Of France's under-20 cohort, Muslims are 25%, with 40% to 50% in major cities.  France's far-left comprises 20% of French votes, with Le-Pen now under 10%; a Farrakhan-like figure, a music-hall performer who goes by the name Dieudonne (God's gift), son of a white mother and black father from Cameroon, has emerged.  Their common focus: hate Jews, hate Israel, hate America.  An energized Muslim community could supply tons of new voters for this satanic coalition.  When I was growing up France was Brigitte Bardot, Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf, Fernandel, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Charles DeGaulle.  Time machine, anyone?

Katrina Kayo by Congress?

While Congress lambasted Homeland Security Secretary Cherthoff this week, the Wall Street Journal informs us that Congress specifies how 40 percent of emergency preparedness funds are spent by the Department, according to a state-specific formula that allocates the most per capita to Wyoming and then second to Alaska, with (you guessed it) California and New York last.  Cherthoff and his predecessor, Tom Ridge, had less than three years to integrate 22 agencies into a 184,000 person Cabinet department with a $40 billion budget.  WSJ wryly suggests that Jack Welch, GE CEO superstar, would have had trouble doing this.  Now, just imagine Congress running GE....

CIA Domestic Assassin Program

There must be something in the air around Langley.  A WSJ op-ed today by ex-CIA officer Guillermo Christensen reports that yet another ex-CIA officer has fired a salvo at President Bush over Iraq.  This time the culprit is none other than Paul Pillar, pivotal in CIA intelligence analyses of Iraq all the way back to before the Gulf War, when the CIA thought Saddam was nowhere near getting a nuke (in fact after the GW we learned he was within a year of success), to Iraqi Freedom and beyond.  So Pillar, having gone along with deeply flawed intel assessments, never having made any serious effort we know of to change conclusions, now fires at 43.  Christensen notes that CIA betrayals like this undermine trust between the CIA and its Executive Branch clients.  Now, get this: Pillar authored a book in 1999 opining that terrorism was a problem to be managed, not confronted militarily.  A Weekly Standard 2/10 piece has that and more about Pillar's treachery.

Crime: Safer With Cary & Sophia

The Washington Post reveals shocking news: Two economists, apparently unable to find useful work, have completed a "study" showing that ugly people are more crime-prone than beauties.  Think back over the years at how many perps you have seen on the local newscast who look like Cary Grant or Sophia Loren.  Oh yes, the project was federally funded.  Too bad Harry Truman, who once pined for a one-armed economist who could not say "on the other hand," is not with us to let fly on this abuse of taxpayer dollars.  How about a new study on why ugly people rarely become matinee idols, rarely get hired by (or married to) Donald Trump, rarely win beauty contests?....

Index 2/16/06

11 posts: (1) Senatorial Stroke: Sounds of Silence--MSM Murders; (2) Cultural Illiteracy Comes to Turin--Weenie Watch; (3) Peggy on Cheney--The Home Front; (4) Iran: Overt Covert Action--Us v. Them; (5) Katrina Keystone Kops--Katrina Etc.; (6) MSM Murdered: Professor Plum by Rope in the Cyber-Conservatory?--MSM Murders; (7) Plame Leak: Will Scooter Scoot?--The Home Front; (8) Muslims v. West: West Bank or Demographic Destiny?--Us v. Them; (9) India Rising--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (10) Military Trains for Governance--Us v. Them; (11) Hillary Shows Her Stuff(ed)--The Home Front.

Senatorial Stroke: Sounds of Silence

On Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Democrat Harry Reid, 65 years old and the Senate Minority Leader, suffered a mini-stroke.  The press was told Friday, August 19.  MSM was too busy giving Cindy Sheehan her first 15 minutes of fame to bother making a big deal over this.  Now, 6 months later, the Veep is in hot MSM water for an injury--that he inflicted on someone else.  As best as LFTC can recall, every time Cheney has had any kind of medical problem it has been promptly disclosed.  So which is worse, a vice-president causing injury to someone else, with the public told 24 hours later, or a top Senate leader suffering a stroke, with the public told 72 hours later?

Cultural Illiteracy Comes to Turin

Three-time US male figure-skating champ Johnny Weir is enamored of Russian culture--his coach is a Russian with the lilting name of Tatiana Tarasova.  (Her name brings to mind Tatiana Romanova, the Ian Fleming bait for 007 in From Russia With Love, doesn't it?)  So how does Weir "honor" Russian culture?  By wearing a warm-up jacket with CCCP on it (news photo).  Except CCCP is the acronym (in transliteration from Cyrillic characters) not for Russia but for the former Soviet Union.  (Chalk up another triumph for neo-Marxist US educrats.)  Does Weir think that the former USSR honored Russian culture?  Stalin blew up the largest Orthodox church in Moscow in 1929, to make way for a gigantic public bathing pool.  Soviet architecture is grotesque in its ugliness--square cement blocks that starkly contrast with the decorative facades and graceful cupolas of classic Russian architecture.  Prokofiev and Shostakovitch had to compose in a manner acceptable to Stalin's notorious cultural commissar, Andrei Zhdanov.  Solzhenitsyn had to distribute his manuscripts via literary underground (samizdat).  Novelist Boris Pasternak was humiliated and forced to recant works he had written.  And so on.  As the song title goes, I could go on singing--of one Olympian's epic imbecility.  Citius, altius, fortius, imbecilicus.

Peggy on Cheney

Peggy Noonan, poetic and perceptive, mulls over the potential fallout from Cheney's hunting accident.  She surmises that the White House will seriously weigh a change after the 2006 elections, so as to give Bush's policies life after 2008.  Cheney has been, Noonan writes, a "hate magnet" for five years, which has mostly helped 43 by drawing fire otherwise aimed at him.  Such a magnet can get "too hot."  Cheney, for his part, may well consent.  He has no Presidential ambitions (plus, he already was acting President for a day when 43 went under anesthesia in 2002).  His effectiveness diminished, Cheney may well decide 6 years of taking incoming is enough.  Noonan doesn't speculate who might ascend but her use of the pronoun "he" implies she doesn't think it'd be Condi.

Iran: Overt Covert Action

In a simpler time Condi Rice would not have made a public presentation on funding for Iranian dissidents.  In 1947 the CIA covertly funded pro-democracy factions in Italy and saved the country from Communism.  Just how close a call that one was: Italy flirted with Communism for three more decades, with Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer pressing for an "historic compromise" in the 1970s.  Fortunately that gambit failed.  As recently as the 1980s Ronald Reagan worked with the Vatican and John Paul the Great to fund Solidarity in Poland and Charter 77 in other Eastern European countries.  (A fine description of that operation is found in Peter Schweizer's Victory.)

But we live in new times indeed.  Condi announces we are subsidizing groups--thankfully, she did not say which.  But does she think--do Members of Congress think?--does Dubya think?--Iran will not notice?  Which means Iran will step up its repressive measures.  Which means they are less likely to work.  Mind you, had the operation been kept secret the press would have gone to work.  Having just seen how damaging our "longest telegraphed punch in history" was in Iraq, we now repeat the blunder in Iran.  Makes one nostalgic for old times.

Keystone Katrina Kops

In a masterpiece of political timing, FEMA (Federal Emergency Miscue Agency) is dropping 12,000 homeless refugees off its hotel-funding rolls 24 hours before St. Valentine's Day and 48 hours before the federal government's release of a massive Katrina report.  Republicans may be thankful that FEMA is mismanaging disaster recovery and not the Party's fall election campaign. Yesterday Senators stomped all over Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherthoff, who no doubt wishes he had stayed a federal appeals judge--after Katrina his chances of returning to the bench, which would entail a new Senate confirmation--are about the same as the chances of the Islamic world embracing Judaism.  Yesterday the House released its 520-page report on Katrina mismanagement (A Failure of Initiative), which will make for lively beach reading this August (but not in hurricane-prone coastal regions).

A 2/13 Wall Street Journal editorial warned of what it puckishly calls the Louisiana repurchase: a Republican Congressman's proposal to create a $30 billion revolving-door loan facility akin to Fannie Mae, to aid homeowner rebuilding in New Orleans, equal to, says the WSJ, some $250k per home damaged by Katrina.  This would be in addition to the $100 billion combined total of funds spent or authorized for future spending on Katrina aid.

On another note, LFTC posted a Sept. 9, 2005 LA Times story that attributed the failure of the levees to a 1967 suit filed by the environmental group, Save Our Wetlands.  The group has posted a reply on its website, which has just come to my attention.  To give them due process I am posting it on LFTC.  My view, after reading the Save Our Wetlands reply, is that LAT has the better of it.  While the federal judge did not, as Save Our Wetlands points out, block the Dutch Gate solution it did request another study.  The Army corps tired of fighting, after a decade, and sought instead a levee upgrade for Cat 3 protection.  This was a reasonable decision, in that fighting the suit--with eventual outcome highly uncertain--could have consumed more time with New Orleans even less protected than it was after the levees were buttressed, however, inadequately.

MSM Murdered: Professor Plum by Rope in the Cyber-Conservatory?

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur and media critic named Andrew Keen attacks blogger democracy in Web 2.0, an article run in, of all places, The Weekly Standard.  Keen says that the hyper-democracy of everyone being a news source instead of having professionals in mainstream media constitutes "Marxism" in cyberspace.  This is a strange piece for TWS to run.  First of all, there are Big Guns in cyberspace, so not everyone is equal.  Second, his notion of "quality" is broad enough to include Alfred Hitchcock (surely) and Irish U2 rocker Bono (not so surely, I suspect).

Set aside that for lots of folks--of my age at least--U-2 denotes a spy plane, not a rock group.  Set aside as well whether rock music qualifies as "quality" music at all.  Where was Keen in September 2004, when MSM honcho Dan "Fake But Accurate" Rather was brought low by the lowly pajamahadeen--dozens of handwriting, forensic and typesetting and computer experts chiming in with the collected vast expertise of the marketplace.  They brought vastly more knowledge to bear on the issue than CBS had assembled from its Rolodexes.

Keen proclaims: "The purpose of our media and culture industries --beyond the obvious need to make money and entertain people--is to discover, nurture, and reward elite talent."  Such "elitism" has given us a 25 years of raw musical sewage, which sounds to any decently musical ear like garbage cans being kicked around in a back alley, coupled to lyrics resonant with underclass values--profanity that would make a longshoreman blush, misogyny and mayhem glorified ad nauseum.  Keen wants an Allan Bloom or Oswald Spengler to inform our culture.  Really?  What commonality, if any, have those two with Dan Rather, Entertainment Tonight, reality TV, sneering & leering sitcoms, Jerry Springer?  OK, there are some good shows, to be fair.  Much vastly more junk is aired on what former FCC Commissioner Newton Minow famously once labeled a "vast wasteland."  A small number of mega-gatekeepers gave us network news dominance for a generation.  Were people better informed then?  Hardly: Most viewers mostly knew what the Big three networks wanted us to know.  And if Keen thinks rock music is quality art music I am grateful he is not my gatekeeper.

Plame Leak: Will Scooter Scoot?

V-P Cheney revealed that the V-P, like the President, has the legal authority, per executive order, to declassify information.  Scooter Libby's hint that higher-ups authorized his disclosure of Spy Gal Val's status may thus not be an attempt to implicate higher-ups, but rather a defense of lawful authorization. Which means that Cheney is safe, and that Scooter may well scoot to freedom, too.  All of which will enrage the media, and make the probe of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Inspector Javert special counsel, look like an even bigger waste of time and money than it looks like already.

Muslims v. West: West Bank or Demograpic Destiny?

Daniel Pipes fears that rather than a pure clash between Islamic and Western civilizations there is a growing chasm, with Muslims choosing to live apart from the West as much as possible.  He offers a long list of ways this is already happening.  The longer-term consequence he predicts, quite plausibly, is a Muslim world that falls even further behind the West, with resulting growth of Muslim anger and resentment.  Not at all a pretty picture.  But for oil and the growing specter of transnational WMD terror, the West would happily oblige.  Alas, a clean, safe separation option is a fantasy.  Which bodes ill for the future, unless radical Islam loses favor.

Mark Steyn's sees a surging Islamic birthrate and sagging Western rates, and if demography is destiny sees illiberal Muslim culture victorious.  The most shocking aspect of 9/11 for him was not Muslim hijackers flying planes into buildings, but that so many Muslim communities in the West celebrating, or at least not condemning, the act.  Not an auspicious augury.

India Rising

Martin Feldstein, a Council of Economic Advisers Chairman under Reagan,visited India and finds its economy growing strongly, and likely to continue doing so under its reformist government.  Strong in high-tech, but still weak in industrial manufacturing and with a fragile banking system, India is nonetheless on the move.  His article provides a solid snapshot of where India stands now.

Military Trains for Governance

A New York Times front-pager gives a neat picture of G.I.s learning cultural norms as part of Afghan operations.  We learn that in Afghan villages the tribal elder is often the village fool, and power often vests in the young kid with slicked-back dark hair (an Afghan Elvis?).  A good read.